Guns, temples and French replicas punctuate Laos, says Brett Atkinson.

Laos' bizarre capital is a languid collection of wide French-style avenues furnished with cruising tuk tuks, and plane-tree studded neighbourhoods dotted with Buddhist temples and French colonial architecture.

Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said that "the judgement in itself is a message to Pakistan that they should not export terror to India."

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was believed to be making a rare trip to China amid tensions over the sinking of a South Korean warship and stalled nuclear disarmament negotiations, South Korean reports said.

A NZ schoolboys cricket team has travelled to play in India for two weeks despite a Mfat warning of an "extreme risk" of terrorism.

A major hospital has evacuated patients and suspended all but emergency surgery.

In Manipur, locals coyly point out that, unlike many varieties of chilli, umorok burns while entering the body but not on the way out.

China is undergoing an awful wave of frenzied attacks on schoolchildren by knife-weilding men.

A Chinese gymnast, now living in Huntly, has been stripped of an Olympic bronze medal for being too young during the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

Being a large man taking up a space usually occupied by three Vietnamese, writer Walter Mason was obviously an easily noticed foreign visitor in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon).

More than a decade later, Kiwis are still patrolling the streets of East Timor.

Our small country has a long record in world peacekeeping.

Life aboard this luxury cruise ship is a suite sensation, says David Balham.